Our Week in the Forest

The joys and benefits of playing with water!

This week we have enjoyed some very warm weather and with that the children have be drawn towards water play! We have been making waterfalls in trees, pouring the water down the creases in the tree branches in the nest. We have been making “perfumes” and “medicines” with the water using our natural surroundings such as fallen flower petals, mud and stones. It has also been the perfect weather to use our water sprays and to learn about mechanisms as well as keeping ourselves nice and cool spraying each other. We have also had new recipes being created and tested in our mud kitchen, with plenty of tea making.

The children have definitely been drawn to the water play due to it being fantastically fun and also reassuringly cooling, however there are plenty of learning benefits from such play. Most notably the sensory learning and experiences the children have with water is something that is very important for children. There are also benefits of social interaction with others, physical development of dexterity and eye to hand coordination, scientific discovery related to whether objects float or sink and then also the mathematical learning and vocabulary of full, half full, empty, heavy, light etc. Water play has such a plethora of opportunities for learning and the best thing about it is children truly enjoy it and engage with these activities.

With this amazing opportunity for the children’s learning, we aim to encourage and develop their interests when they are in the forest with us. We will continue to provide the children with the support and resources to fuel their ambitions and ideas, taking full advantage of the abundance of natural resources around us. As practitioners it is so exciting to see how imaginative and creative our children are, therefore we will always look to scaffold their learning and provide new opportunities for them each week.

Alongside our water play the children have also been climbing lots of trees this week, mainly in the shaded “nest” area. We have also been making more tepees and dens for rest areas and quiet play. And finally we have also had some fantastic adventure walks exploring the whole palace grounds and investigating the trees in our forest.

What an outstanding week we have had both weather wise and learning! We look forward to the weeks ahead and I’m sure the children will be welcoming some rain to play and to cool us down in the near future.

Reminders and News

We're delighted to announceOur Fulham nursery this week received an Ofsted rating of Outstanding. We are thrilled with the result and wanted to share with all our parents. The report is available on our website.

In the warmer weatherA reminder to please apply sun screen before joining us in the forest, to make sure the children have water bottles full of water and for children to come in with sun hats to protect them in the sunshine. We'd also suggest sturdy shoes rather than wellies on warmer days.